Multiple bottle carriers for holding and carrying bottles or jugs by their necks are well known. A common type of commercially available carrier is fabricated from thin gauge sheets of plastic. The thin planar sheet is die-cut to provide holes for engaging the necks of the containers and holes for grasping the carrier, and is thermo-formed into a three-dimensional shape to provide structural integrity to the carrier. There are several problems with this carrier. First, the thermo-formed plastic sheet shrouds the container, obscuring visibility of the product and product labels. Second, the thin gauge and sharp edges of the plastic material makes the carrier uncomfortable to carry.
An integrally molded carrier for carrying two containers by their necks is disclosed in commonly owned U.S. Pat. No. Re 35,288. However, the carrier disclosed therein suffers from the drawback of bending slightly in the grip portion, thereby allowing the containers to collide with each other in their lower portions. When the containers are made of glass, such as is the case with wine bottles, this may result in breakage of the bottles.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,093,295 discloses an in-line design bottle carrier capable of carrying three bottles by their necks by means of three uniformly spaced split collars mounted within a frame interconnected by a single row of longitudinally extending rigid bars. Although the rigid bars tend to prevent the bottles from clanking together, this carrier features two loops that function as handles, which must be pulled up substantially simultaneously and drawn together before they may be grasped by the user, making the balanced lifting of the bottles awkward. These handles also tend to stick up above the necks of the bottles, making the bottle/carrier combination difficult to ship. Finally, the ""295 carrier is difficult to apply to groups of three bottles with automated equipment.
The present invention provides an integrally molded carrier for balanced and stabilized lifting and carrying of two bottles by their necks that prevents the lower portions of the bottles from colliding with each other, thereby preventing breakage in the case of glass bottles. The carrier includes a substantially planar web having two nodes defining two annular supports. A flexible annular neck-engaging flange integral with the web is arranged within each annular support for releasably engaging the necks of containers. The centers of the annular supports are substantially aligned along a common axis. Two substantially U-shaped members also lie in the same plane as the web, but are flexibly attached to each side of the two annular supports and may be interlocked so as to form a bottle-engaging stay that maintains separation of the bottles while they are lifted and carried. Because the carrier is molded in one piece and lies in a single plane, it readily lends itself to stacking and shipping in large numbers.